The Pharmacy Guild of Australia says it can help alleviate the “huge stress on doctors” after declaring that patients will support pharmacists branching out into adjusting asthma medicine dosages and the treatment of cellulitis.

On Sunday, the lobby group was promoting the results of its online survey covering some 2400 patients.

The first six of the 10 questions posed were about GPs.

These included whether patients had “ever” presented to ED because a GP was not available (25% said yes) or if they had “ever” waited longer than they considered acceptable for a GP appointment (39% said yes).